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Marisa Plescia's Travel Journal

Village Tour

INDIA | Thursday, 10 Nov 2011 | Views [338]

Yesterday all the volunteers were lucky enough to go to the nearby village of Devalapalli. According to Mr. Anish, the head of facilities at SB, about 150 families live there. Although I have driven through the village a ton (you have to pass it ... Read more >


Halloween in India!

INDIA | Wednesday, 2 Nov 2011 | Views [552]

I must admit I was very bummed about not being with my friends/family for Halloween. However, this Halloween was just as fun! For a couple weeks now, the 11 th and 12 th grade girls and I have been planning my Halloween costume. They decided to ... Read more >


Happy Diwali!!

INDIA | Wednesday, 2 Nov 2011 | Views [343]

Words cannot even describe how great and fun Diwali was!! Diwali is known as the “Festival of Lights.” It is a celebration of good conquering evil, the New Year, and the return of a banished ruler. It is a really big deal over here and is celebrated ... Read more >


Pondicherry!

INDIA | Monday, 31 Oct 2011 | Views [522]

This weekend I decided to get out of the Shanti Bhavan “bubble” and go to Pondicherry, a beach French colonial town. It took a loonnng time to get there, 7 ½ hours! We hired a driver to take us there so it wasn’t extremely bad since we didn’t have ... Read more >


Autorickshaws: Aka the car of death

INDIA | Saturday, 22 Oct 2011 | Views [276]

Autorickshaws...the main form of transportation in Indian cities are probably my least favorite thing. They are 3 wheeled little motorcars that go everywhere and anywhere. They squeeze between cars, drive on sidewalks(if you can say there are "sidewalks"... Read more >


First Trip to Bangalore!

INDIA | Tuesday, 18 Oct 2011 | Views [515]

This weekend the volunteers decided to have a girls' weekend in Bangalore...the closest big city, which is about 2-3 hours away. We needed a break from everything and also wanted to celebrate a birthday and going away. Bangalore is known as India's ... Read more >


The Kids' Clothes

INDIA | Wednesday, 12 Oct 2011 | Views [394]

At Shanti Bhavan(and throughout India as well), the clothes are from donations. Thus, the fashion of India and the children here is often quite interesting. The girls wear a lot of "80s" and "90s" clothes. All their dresses are those ... Read more >


Trip To Hosur

INDIA | Tuesday, 11 Oct 2011 | Views [552]

This past Sunday myself and 3 other volunteers decided to go to the nearest city Hosur for the day. Hosur is about 1 1/2 hrs away and cost 1500 rupees($30) roundtrip for a car to take us there. Our journey began at 9am with the driver picking us up at ... Read more >


Disneyland and Discussing Untouchables

INDIA | Wednesday, 5 Oct 2011 | Views [344]

The other day I told the kids to get a book from the library to read during Independent Help. One little girl named Maria brought back a book about Disneyland probably from the 60s/70s. I went up to her and said, "I love Disneyland. I've been there.... Read more >


Teaching So Far...

INDIA | Wednesday, 5 Oct 2011 | Views [452] | Comments [1]

On Monday, I started to teaching my classes. I was basically assigned all of 5th grade classes: Spelling, Grammar, Creative Writing, Science, Reading(Literature), Social Studies, Independent Help, and Completion of Tasks. For a couple of weeks because ... Read more >


Worship of the god of Instruments

INDIA | Wednesday, 5 Oct 2011 | Views [238]

Today we worshipped the god of instruments. I wasn't quite sure what was going on, but the men prepared an altar. Then they passed around a bowl of fire, a bowl of clay, and a bowl of red powder. The women told us to follow them and we fanned the fire, ... Read more >


Living Conditions

INDIA | Tuesday, 4 Oct 2011 | Views [267]

As most people know, I am not very good at "roughing it." I have never really been camping and my school camp experience is limited to weekends and trips to Catalina, etc. Thus, this is a whole new experience for me and I am proud to say ... Read more >


Seeing their Parents

INDIA | Monday, 3 Oct 2011 | Views [504]

Today was the first time that the preschoolers got to see their parents since coming to Shanti Bhavan. I'll explain in detail in a later story but basically what happens is a social worker, a doctor, and a psychologist goes to villages and finds children ... Read more >


Traveling to India

INDIA | Friday, 30 Sep 2011 | Views [411]

Ok bear with me...I have never written a blog before.  Well I have finally made it to India after 36 hours of traveling! I left on Tuesday at 5:55pm and got to the school at 7:00 pm today. It was one crazy trip though! I had a 10 hour layover in London ... Read more >


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